2018 Top Ten Best Fiction

  • Arnold, Elana. What Girls Are Made Of. Lerner/Carolrhoda Lab. 2017. Sixteen-year-old Nina experiences sex, betrayal, loss, and a dysfunctional home life, all while trying to understand what it means to be female in the world and whether love can ever be truly unconditional.
  • Bardugo, Leigh. The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic. Illus. by Sara Kipin. Macmillan/Imprint. 2017. Traditional fairy tales are refreshingly twisted, re-created, and wrapped in gorgeous illustrations in this stand-alone collection of six short stories. The world-building will be familiar to Bardugo's fans, and readers new to her Grishaverse have the pleasure of knowing they can take further excursions into this world.
  • Lee, Mackenzi. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen. 2017. Montague, the son of a British nobleman, embarks on a European tour with his best friend (and secret crush) Percy and his sister Felicity. Along the way, they encounter adventure and conflict that leads them to a very different destiny than the one awaiting their return to England.
  • Moon, Sarah. Sparrow. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. 2017. Sparrow has a secret: her closest friends are birds. When she feels anxious, she goes to the roof and flies. One day, this practice lands her in the hospital, facing questions from the adults in her life. Slowly, she recovers, finds her voice, and makes new friends along the way.
  • Reynolds, Jason. Long Way Down. Simon & Schuster/Atheneum. 2017. Will's brother has been shot. In this free-verse novel, Will steps into an elevator ready to head downstairs and to follow the rules he’s been taught and avenge his brother's death, when he encounters the ghosts of victims of a chain reaction caused by a shooting.
  • Taylor, Laini. Strange the Dreamer. Little, Brown. 2017. Lazlo Strange is an orphan raised by monks, and he’s dedicated his life to learning. His favorite story is of Weep, the lost fairytale city that was literally removed from memory. This is the story of his search for the magical city.
  • Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. Balzer+Bray. 2017. Starr Carter is a black girl caught between two worlds: her poor, black neighborhood, and her suburban, mostly white high school. Occupying this liminal space becomes nearly impossible when Starr witnesses, and is forced to speak out about, the fatal shooting of her unarmed friend by a white cop.
  • Watson, Renee. Piecing Me Together. Bloomsbury USA. 2017. Artist Jade has big dreams, but she recognizes that coming from a rough neighborhood creates barriers. She reluctantly joins Woman to Woman, a mentoring program that promises a scholarship. Her well-intentioned mentor, also black, doesn't understand Jade has no desire to be “saved.” Each has things to learn from the other.
  • Zappia, Francesca. Eliza and Her Monsters. HarperCollins/Greenwillow. 2017. Fellow students don’t know that, when she’s not at school, reclusive senior Eliza is LadyConstellation, creator of the wildly popular Monstrous Sea. New student Wallace is a huge fan of the webcomic, and hr slowly breaks through her shell. However, trying to keep her two lives separate may cost Eliza everything.
  • Zentner, Jeff. Goodbye Days. Crown Books for Young Readers. 2017. Carver's three best friends are killed in a car accident soon after he sends the driver a text message, and grief and guilt take their toll. When the grandmother of one of his deceased friends asks for a “goodbye day,” Carver agrees, hoping for closure.